Champions of the Force

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Kyp was annoyed at himself for allowing the Imperials to haul so much weaponry away. He was sure it would eventually be used against the New Republic; but at the moment Kyp took his pleasure from eradicating the solar system.

  "You can't escape," he whispered. "A few might get away, but you can't all escape." He glanced at his chronometer. Now that instabilities had begun pulsing out of the star, he could get a more accurate determination of how long it would take for the sun to explode. The Caridans had twenty — seven minutes before the first shockwave struck.

  The flow of ships had petered out, and only a few scrap — heap vessels struggled out of the gravity well. Carida did not appear to be well supplied with vessels; most of their prime equipment must already have been commandeered by Grand Admiral Thrawn or some other Imperial warlord.

  The holopanel flickered, and the image of the comm officer appeared. "Pilot of the Sun Crusher! This is Lieutenant Dauren calling Kyp Durron — this is an emergency, an urgent message!"

  Kyp could well imagine that anyone still on Carida might have an urgent message! He took his time answering just to make the comm officer squirm. "Yes, what is it?"

  "Kyp Durron, we have located your brother Zeth."

  Kyp felt as if someone had thrust a lightsaber through his heart. "What? You said he was dead."

  "We checked thoroughly and found him in our files after all. He is stationed here in the citadel, and he has not managed to find transport off Carida! I've summoned him to my comm station. He'll be here in a moment."

  "How can that be!" Kyp demanded. "You said he died in training! I have the files you sent me."

  "Falsified information," Lieutenant Dauren said bluntly.

  Kyp squeezed his eyes shut as hot tears sprang to fill his vision: sudden overwhelming joy at knowing Zeth was still alive, anger at having committed the most fundamental mistake of all — believing what the Imperials told him.

  He snapped a glance at the chronometer. Twenty — one minutes until the explosion. Kyp wrenched at the Sun Crusher's controls and shot back toward the planet like a laser blast. He doubted he had enough time to rescue his brother, but he had to try.

  He stared at the time display ticking away. His vision burned, and he felt a jolt go through him every time a number ticked down.

  It took five minutes to get back to Carida. He orbited around the massive planet in a tight arc, crossing over the line from night into day. He set course for the small cluster of fortresses and buildings that made up the Imperial training center.

  Lieutenant Dauren appeared again in the small holographic field, dragging a white — armored stormtrooper into view. "Kyp Durron! Please respond."

  "I'm here," Kyp said. "I'm coming to get you."

  The comm officer turned to the stormtrooper. "Twenty — one twelve, remove your helmet."

  Hesitantly, as if he had not done so in a long time, the stormtrooper tugged off his helmet. He stood blinking in the unfiltered light as if he rarely looked at the world through his own eyes. Kyp saw a heartrending image that reminded him of the face he saw when he looked in a reflection plate.

  "State your name," Dauren said.

  The stormtrooper blinked in confusion. Kyp wondered if he was drugged. "Twenty — one twelve," he said.

  "Not your service number, your name!"

  The young man paused for a long time, as if pawing through rusty, unused memories until he came out with a word that sounded more like a question than an answer.

  "Zeth? Zeth Dur ... Durron."

  Kyp didn't need to hear him speak his name, though. He remembered the tanned, wiry boy who swam in the lakes of Deyer, who could catch fish with a small hand net.

  "Zeth," he whispered. "I'm coming."

  The comm officer waved his hands. "You can't make it in time," he said. "You must stop the Sun Crusher torpedo. Reverse the chain reaction. That's our only hope."

  "I can't stop it!" Kyp answered. "Nothing can stop it."

  Dauren screamed, "If you don't, we're all going to die!"

  "Then you're going to die," Kyp said. "You all deserve it. Except for Zeth. I'm going to come for him."

  He plowed like thunder through the high atmosphere of Carida. Heated air pearled off the sides of the superweapon as a shock front pushed a shield in front of him. Sonic booms rippled behind him.

  The planet surface approached with gut — wrenching speed. Kyp soared over a cracked, blasted wasteland with craggy red rocks and fractured canyons. Out in the flat desert he saw geometric shapes, tracks of precise roads laid down by the Imperial corps of engineers.

  The Sun Crusher shot like a meteor over a cluster of bunkers and metallic huts. Isolated stormtroopers marched about in drills, unaware that their sun was about to explode.

  On the chronometer seven minutes remained.

  Kyp called up a targeting screen and found the primary citadel. The air tugged at his ship, buffeting him with heavy winds, but Kyp did not care. Flames from the ignited atmosphere flickered off the quantum armor.

  "Give me your specific location," Kyp said.

  The comm officer had begun sobbing.

  "I know you're in the main citadel building!" Kyp cried. "Where exactly?"

  "In the upper levels of the southernmost turret," Zeth answered precisely, responding in a military manner, slipping back into stormtrooper training.

  Kyp saw the jagged spires of the military academy rising from a cluttered plateau. Kyp's scanners projected an enlarged image of the citadel, pinpointing the turret Zeth had mentioned.

  Five minutes remained.

  "Zeth, get ready, I'm coming in."

  "To rescue us both!" Dauren said.

  Kyp felt a twinge inside. He wanted to leave the comm officer who had lied to him, who had made him despair and forced him into the decision to destroy Carida. He wanted to let the lieutenant die in a burst of incinerating solar flame — but that man could help him, for now.

  "Get yourselves into an open area. I'm going to be there in less than a minute. You can't get up to the roof in time, so I'm going to blast it off."

  Dauren nodded. Zeth finally overcame his own confusion and said, "Kyp? My brother? Kyp, is that you?"

  The Sun Crusher streaked over the jagged minarets and pinnacles of the Caridan citadel. A mammoth wall surrounded the entire fortress. Out in the courtyard hundreds of low — ranking refugees scrambled about in tiny fliers aiming up into the skies, though with no hyperdrive capability they could never outrun the fury of the supernova.

  Kyp decelerated abruptly until he hovered over the fortress. Suddenly the Sun Crusher lurched from side to side as automatic perimeter lasers targeted him and fired.

  "Shut down your defenses!" he screamed at the comm officer. He wasted time targeting and firing at the perimeter lasers. Two of the weapon emplacements blew up in roiling smoke, but the third, a blaster cannon, scored a direct hit against the Sun Crusher.

  The superweapon spun end over end, out of control until it smashed into one of the tall turret walls. Kyp managed to get control again and raised the vehicle up. No time to vent his anger. No time to do anything but get to the tower.

  Kyp watched the chronometer click down from four minutes to three.

  "Take shelter!" he said. "I'm going to blast open the roof."

  He targeted with one of his weapons and fired — but he received an ERROR message. The laser turret had been damaged by his collision with the tower. Kyp swore and spun the ship around so he could target with a different laser.

  After a short controlled burst, the roof of the tower melted inward. Chunks of synrock and metal reinforcement girders sprayed into the air. Kyp flicked on his tractor beam to yank the debris away before it could collapse into the lower floors.

  He brought the Sun Crusher over the smoking crater that had been the rooftop. He pointed his scanners down and saw two people scramble out from under the desks where they had taken shelter.

  Two minutes.

  Kyp hovered over them. If he
lowered his ship, they could reach the ladder to the hatch, where they could climb into the shielded Sun Crusher. He already had an escape route programmed in.

  As Kyp dropped toward them, Lieutenant Dauren stood up and battered Zeth on the back of the skull with a broken plasteel shard. Zeth fell to his knees, shaking his head and pulling out his blaster in reflex. The comm officer ran to the Sun Crusher's ladder, but Kyp — furious at seeing what Dauren had done — raised the ship out of the man's reach.

  Scrambling, waving his arms, the comm officer jumped up to reach the rungs of the ladder, but he missed and slapped his hands across the hull instead. The quantum armor was still smoking hot from Kyp's fiery plunge through the atmosphere. Dauren screamed as it burned his hands.

  Falling back to the ground, Dauren turned just in time to see Zeth point the blaster at him. With precise stormtrooper training Zeth targeted and fired. The comm officer flew backward, his chest a black hole. He collapsed among the debris.

  One minute.

  Kyp maneuvered the Sun Crusher back into position, lowered the ladder; but Zeth collapsed to his knees; blood streamed down the back of his head, streaking the white stormtrooper armor. Zeth could not move. He had been too badly injured by the comm officer.

  Thinking rapidly, Kyp locked on to his brother's limp form with the tractor beam, yanking him up off the floor and drawing him toward the Sun Crusher. This would be it. Kyp left the controls and scrambled to the hatch. He would have to open the hatch, climb down the ladder, and haul his brother up inside. He reached for the locking mechanism that would open the Sun Crusher —

  And then Carida's sun exploded.

  The shock wave roared through the atmosphere, bringing instant incinerating fire. The entire citadel turned into a storm of flames.

  The Sun Crusher tumbled end over end, and Kyp flew against the far wall of the cockpit, his face plastered against one of the external viewscreens. He saw the faint afterimage of Zeth's body disintegrating into a fading silhouette as the stellar energy ripped across Carida.

  Kyp hauled himself into the pilot seat. In shock, he used his Jedi instincts to punch the sublight engines. The first wave from the supernova had been the prompt radiation, high — energy particles shot out with the explosion of the star. A minute or so later the heavier radiation would come.

  As rippling waves from the second hurricane of energy struck Carida and cracked the planet open, the Sun Crusher accelerated far beyond its red lines along the preprogrammed escape route.

  Kyp felt gravity stretching his face into a grimace. His eyelids squeezed closed, and anguished tears flowed backward across his temples with the pull of acceleration.

  The Sun Crusher blasted out of the atmosphere and entered hyperspace. As starlines formed around him and the supernova made one last grab with hands of flame, Kyp let out a long anguished cry of despair at what he had done.

  His scream vanished with him into hyperspace.

  Leia Organa Solo emerged from the Millennium Falcon on Yavin 4, ducking her head as she walked down the landing ramp. She looked toward the towering edifice of the Great Massassi Temple.

  It was a cool morning on the jungle moon, and mist rose from the ground, clinging to the low treetops and brushing against the stone ziggurat like a thin white shroud. A funeral shroud, she thought. For Luke.

  It had been a week since the trainees at the Jedi academy had found Luke Skywalker's motionless body atop the temple. They had brought him inside, done their best to care for him — but they did not know what to do. The best New Republic medics had found no physical damage. They agreed that Luke still lived, but he lay in complete stasis. He responded to none of their tests or probes.

  Leia had little hope of doing anything herself, but she could at least be with her brother.

  The twins came clomping down the Falcon's ramp, seeing who could make the loudest banging noises with their small boots. Han stood between Jacen and Jaina, holding their hands."Be quiet, you two," he said.

  "Are we going to see Uncle Luke?" Jaina asked.

  "Yes," Han answered, "but he's sick. He won't be able to talk to you."

  "Is he dead?" Jacen asked.

  "No!" Leia answered sharply. "Come on. Let's get into the temple." The twins scampered ahead down the ramp.

  The sharp jungle smells brought warm and fresh memories to Leia as she walked across the clearing. Fallen trees, decaying leaves, and flowers mixed into a potent brew of scents. She had proposed the empty ruins as a site for Luke's academy, but Leia had never managed to visit — and now she had come only to see her brother lying in state.

  "I'm not looking forward to this," Han mumbled. "Not at all." Leia reached over to squeeze his hand; he gripped hers, holding tighter and longer than she expected him to.

  Robed figures emerged from the temple, drifting out of the early — morning shadows. She quickly counted a dozen. In the lead she recognized the rusty — orange face of a Calamarian female, Cilghal. Leia herself had seen Jedi potential in the fishlike woman and had urged her to join Luke's academy. Cilghal had managed to use her proven ambassadorial skills to hold the twelve students together in the terrible days following the fall of their Jedi Master.

  Leia recognized other candidates gliding across the dew — damp ground: Streen, an older man with wild hair tucked haphazardly beneath a Jedi hood; he had been a gas prospector on Bespin, a hermit hiding from the voices he heard in his head. She saw tall Kirana Ti, one of the witches of Dathomir whom Leia and Han had encountered during their whirlwind courtship. Kirana Ti stepped forward, flashing a bright smile at the twins; she had a daughter of her own, only a year or so older than the twins, who remained in the care of others back on her homeworld.

  Leia also identified Tionne, with long silvery hair that flowed down the back of her robe. Tionne was a student of Jedi history who wanted desperately to be a Jedi herself.

  Then came hard — bitten Kam Solusar, a once — corrupted Jedi whom Luke had dragged back to the light side. And Dorsk 81, a streamlined, slick — skinned alien who had been cloned generation after generation, because his society believed they had already developed the perfect civilization.

  Leia didn't recognize the other handful of Jedi candidates, but she knew Luke had been diligent in his Jedi search. The call still rang out across the galaxy, inviting those with the potential to become new Jedi Knights.

  Even though their teacher now lay in a coma.

  Cilghal raised a flippered hand. "We are glad you could come, Leia."

  "Ambassador Cilghal," she said. "My brother — has there been any change?" They walked heavily back toward the oppressive temple. Leia believed she already knew the answer.

  "No." Cilghal shook her squarish head. "But perhaps your presence will do something that ours cannot."

  Sensing the solemn mood, the twins refrained from giggling and exploring the misty, stone — walled rooms. As the party entered the gloomy ground — level hangar bay, Cilghal led Leia, Han, and the twins to a turbolift.

  "Come on, Jacen and Jaina," Han said, grabbing their hands again. "Maybe you can help Uncle Luke get better."

  "What can we do?" Jaina asked, her liquid — brown eyes wide and hopeful.

  "I don't know yet, honey," he said. "If you come up with any ideas, let me know."

  The turbolift doors flowed shut, and the platform rose to the top levels of the temple. The twins clung to each other in sudden uneasiness. They had not recovered from their fear of turbolifts since the last time they had ridden one all the way down to the decaying bottom levels of Imperial City. But the ride was over in a moment, and they stepped out into the grand audience chamber of the Great Temple. Skylights spilled sunlight on a broad, polished — stone promenade that led to a raised stage.

  Leia remembered standing on that stage years before, after the Death Star had been destroyed, presenting medals to Han, Chewbacca, Luke, and the other heroes of the battle of Yavin. Now, though, her breath caught in her throat.

  Han groan
ed beside her, a deep, grieving tone that she had never heard him make before.

  On a bier at the end of the room lay Luke — a body stretched out for a funeral in an echoing, empty chamber.

  Her heart thumped with dread. She wanted to turn around so she wouldn't have to look at him — but Leia's feet compelled her forward. She walked with a rapid step that became a run before she reached the end of the promenade. Han followed, carrying the twins, one in each arm. His eyes were red as he fought to keep tears from flowing. Leia already felt a wetness on her cheeks.

  Luke lay in repose, swathed in his Jedi robe. His hair had been combed; his hands were folded across his chest. His skin looked gray and plasticlike.

  "Oh, Luke," she whispered.

  "Too bad you can't just thaw him out," Han said, "like you rescued me from Jabba's Palace."

  Leia reached out to touch Luke. Using her own abilities with the Force, she tried to reach deeper, to brush against his spirit — but she felt only a cold hole, an emptiness as if Luke himself had been taken away. Not dead. She had always felt she would somehow know if her brother died.

  "Is he sleeping?" Jacen said.

  "Yes ... in a way," she answered, not knowing what else to say.

  "When will he wake up?" Jaina asked.

  "We don't know," she said. "We don't know how to wake him up."

  "Maybe if I give him a kiss." Jaina clambered up to smack the motionless lips of her uncle. For an absurd moment Leia held her breath, thinking that the child's magic just might work. But Luke did not stir.

  "He's cold," Jaina mumbled. The little girl's shoulders slumped with disappointment when her uncle failed to wake.

  Han squeezed Leia's waist so hard that it hurt, but she didn't want her husband to stop holding her.

  "He's been unchanged for days," Cilghal said behind them. "We brought his lightsaber with him. We found it beside his body on the rooftop."

  Cilghal hesitated, then moved to stare down at Luke. "Master Skywalker told me I have an innate talent for healing with the Force. He had just begun to show me how to develop my skills — but I've tried all I know. He is not sick. There's nothing physically wrong with him. He seems frozen in a moment of time, as if his soul has left and his body is waiting for him to come back."